I don't know vile about too much punishment for these boys. I'm not saying none, but I would caution about going overboard with it. Boys will be boys is a bit of a cliche, but the real criminal(s) here is/are the person or persons that trafficked that girl.

According to the article, the girl followed a boy she had a crush on into the boy's bathroom to tell him she liked him. Let me repeat that, she followed him into the men's room. When did that happen when we were in high school? This led them to having sex. We don't know how she told him she liked him, but I'm guessing a girl extremely experienced with sex, who unfortunately knows only one way to please men due to an awful 2 year time she was forced to be a prostitute, did so in a manner that the only teenage boys capable of resisting would be those that are gay.

The article was very clear how devastating an experience she had. From 13 to 15 this vulnerable girl was forced to understand there are no options to saying 'no' to sex, the ramifications to saying 'no' were too horrible to imagine. She was also taught that the only 'love' she could get would come from doing whatever the men asked her to do. If she did what the men wanted, she was praised and told she was a 'good girl', if she did not, I'm sure pain would be involved. It certainly was a very thorough brain-washing.

Again according to the article, the counseling this girl could get was limited because she was a runaway. Why is running away something that limits the counseling she could get? She was 13. So this traumatized girl was thrown back into a high school completely unprepared to deal with emotions and knowing only one way to show them.

And that first boy that suddenly just got laid in the boy's room to his complete surprise. Well surprise surprise, he told his friends. And they they asked her if she would go there with them. And the girl was unprepared to say 'no'. She wanted them to like her, and she only knew one way to show that.

So the word spreads, and some boys got laid and others watched. And again surprise surprise, they had phones. What do all of us do with our phones when we see or participate in something unusual in our lives? We takes videos and pictures and share them. Teenage boys (and teenage girls) given phones with these capabilities will do stupid things with them. I doubt there's a high school in any country, where this does not happen. Anyone following the news knows adults are just as likely to do these same stupid things, and if they are in the public eye or get investigated for whatever reason, those stupid things get found out too.

I've seen a few times where teenagers taking pics or vids of their sex lives and share them get charged with child pornography? They ARE children in the legal sense. To elevate those actions to the same level as a sleazy real child pornographer trafficking in pictures of children for profit is absurd.

Punish those boys, but don't make them out to be criminals. It would serve no purpose other than to ruin lives.

I still can't fathom a system that provides obstacles to getting that girl help?

It's a case with a lot of "issues" to consider. And I guess, upon further contemplation, it's not as cut and dry as a person would think. The system really has failed this girl.....talk about someone being allowed to fall through the cracks!

Why she would be denied counseling because she is a runaway is beyond me! It would seem she would be a PRIME candidate for counseling ......but some self-important bureaucrat somewhere has established certain "criteria" that determine who gets help and who doesn't! And she seems to have gotten the short end of that stick.

She got counseling, just for some reason all options (better options) for counseling were not available to her due to being a runaway? It's like when underage girls arrested for prostitution were only treated as criminals. At least now there's some effort to view them as victims.